


The Race For His Life

by paintedpolarbear



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 18:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9001294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedpolarbear/pseuds/paintedpolarbear
Summary: Barry finds himself once more in his mother's living room on the night of her death.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to finish this before season 3 started. Oops?

“You're safe now.”

 

Nora stares. The shock and adrenaline of the night's events are wearing off, and her hands won't stop shaking, and there's a man in the house wearing bizarre clothes and an expression of mixed concern and relief.

 

“Who-who are you?” she whispers, frozen to the carpet, unable to tear her eyes away from this familiar - miraculous - stranger.

 

The man visibly hesitates, for a single moment, then pulls back his cowl. Nora inhales sharply. He looks…

 

“You look just like my father,” she murmurs, reaching a hand out to cup his face. He leans into the touch and his eyes flutter closed and open again.

 

“It's complicated,” he says, just as quietly. “There's a lot of...really intricate science involved. And I can't really explain it. But...it's me, mom.”

 

Her world spills sideways.

 

“It's your Barry.”

 

She takes his face in both of her barely-trembling hands, looking, questioning, wondering. Despite the nonsense, the impossibility, of his words, she knows. With all the certainty of a mother looking at her child, she knows. It really is…

 

“My Barry,” she says. Tears are gathering behind her eyes and in her throat; she traces the soft purple-blue half-moons under his eyes with the pad of her thumb, takes in the sag of his shoulders and the way his head leans heavily in her hands and the tired defeat bruised into every line of his slender frame.

 

“Barry,” she whispers. “Oh, my beautiful boy. What happened to you?”

 

He stifles a sob, almost chokes on it.

 

“A lot, mom. Too much.” He wraps his fingers around her palm and holds tightly, almost desperately, like to a life raft. “But I'm here now. I came as soon as...as I could.”

 

And she understands. He came back, somehow, some way…

 

“You came back for me.” Barry nods.

 

“I know nothing makes sense now,” he says. “But it’s all going to be okay. I promise.”

 

She smiles at that. “I guess you would know.” And finally, finally, the barest hint of a smile touches his face, and her son becomes recognizable in the way his eyes crinkle at the corners and the laugh lines on his cheeks become deeper.

 

He helps her to her feet. For the next minute or so it's quiet, punctuated only by the sound of their breathing and the clock ticking on the wall. It chimes eleven, and footsteps begin echoing at the top of the stairs.

 

Barry makes a face, like he's just remembered something important. “I'll be right back,” he says, then in a blur of lightning, he's gone.

 

\---

 

He finds his younger self wandering the sidewalk in the next neighborhood over, craning his head to look at street signs and swerving between one side of the road and the other. When the kid notices him, he startles, backpedals off the curb, and falls on his ass.

 

“Hey kid,” Barry says. “It's pretty late to be wandering around this far from home.”

“How did I get out here?” young Barry says. “Who are you? Are you the man in the lightning?”

 

“One of them,” his adult self admits. He sits down on the curb. “I'm a good guy. I promise.”

 

“Is my mom ok?” the kid demands. Barry huffs out a breath; the memory of his own terror is already fading, altered, but it's still etched into his younger self’s face.

 

“She's fine, don't worry,” he says, and watches the fear wash out, to be replaced with curiosity - the stubborn kind. Some things never change.

 

“Did you bring me out here?”

 

“Yes.” It's not exactly a lie.

 

“Why?”

 

“I didn't want you to get hurt.”

 

Young Barry pauses. It's clear by his expression he hadn't expected that answer. Rather, something along the lines of “you were in the way.”

 

“Come on, Barry. Lemme take you back home.” The kid startles again - not expecting to hear his name from someone he hadn't told - but gets up off the street anyway and shyly takes Barry's offered hand.

 

“Wanna see something cool?” he asks. The kid's face lights up in a smile, and the street lights up in yellow.

 

\---

 

Lightning blurs through the front door and Barry - eleven years old, terrified - practically leaps into Nora’s arms, clinging desperately to her sleeves the way Barry - twenty-five - had held her hand minutes ago.

 

“Mom!” he cries, and she holds him as tightly as she dares.

 

Henry has long since thundered down the stairs, and is now poised in the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room, casting furrowed looks at his wife, his son….

 

The older Barry, the impossible, time-worn version of her son, is staring at his father with an unfathomable expression. Her blood runs cold to think of what could put such a look on his face.

 

Barry closes his eyes with a shudder, takes a deep breath, and crouches down to look her son - his younger self, she realizes, belatedly, with a thud of her heart - in the eye.

 

“I've gotta go. Be good for your mom, okay?”

 

His voice is thick. Grief, inexplicable, rises in her throat.

 

“Can't you stay?”

 

All he gives her is a small, sad smile. “It doesn't matter. Technically, I stopped existing the moment I walked through the door.”

 

Her son, clutched in her arms, frowns. She fights the instinct to smooth away the lines in his face; he deserves to feel whatever he does. “But you're here.”

 

The older Barry shrugs. “I barely understand it myself. All I know is that tonight was - is - a key moment in my past, so when I altered it...I'm a version of myself that never existed.”

 

Nora thinks it might be years before she even begins to understand. Her younger son breaks away from her grasp and launches himself at the older Barry with all the force of a thunderbolt. The man takes the tackle with poise, although surprise crosses his face for an instant, then pulls the boy into a crushing hug.

 

“You're the real Barry,” he whispers. “You're the only one and the only one that will ever exist. There's never going to be anyone else in the world like you. So you have to be good, okay?” Barry - eleven - nods dumbly, and Barry - twenty-five - extricates himself in order to stand. Henry works his jaw and finds his voice:

 

“What the  _ hell  _ -” Nora flinches a little at the language “ -is going on in here?”

 

“Dad,” Barry says, and Henry goes silent and white as a ghost. “I'm sorry I can't stay.” He pauses, and the air fills with lead. “I love you. I-I love you both.”

 

Then, the same way he came, he's gone - a blur of yellow lightning, like a dream.


End file.
